Great Throughts Treasury

"If we would build on a sure foundation in friendship, we must love our friends for their sake rather than our own."

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeks among rocks."

"Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness."

"Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrong."

"Memory in youth is active and easily impressible; in old age it is comparatively callous to new impressions, but still retains vividly those of earlier years."

"Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks."

"I said to myself, what I would say to someone else in such a case: "You will have to resign yourself to the fact, and above all, not distress yourself about a misfortune that you have not deserved." I did my utmost not to cry not to complain ?But when one does not complain, and when one wants to master oneself with a tyrant's grip ? one's faculties rise in revolt ? and one pays for outward calm with an almost unbearable inner struggle."

"Day and night I find neither rest nor peace ? if I sleep I have tormenting dreams in which I see you always severe, always saturnine and angry with me ?Forgive me then Monsieur if I take the step of writing you again ? How can I bear my life unless I make an effort to alleviate its suffering?"

"I do not seek to justify myself, I submit to all kinds of reproaches ? all I know ? is that I cannot ? that I will not resign myself to the total loss of my master's friendship ? I would rather undergo the greatest bodily pains than have my heart constantly lacerated by searing regrets. If my master withdraws his friendship from me entirely I shall be absolutely without hope ? if he gives me a little friendship ? a very little ? I shall be content ? happy, I would have a motive for living ? for working."

"Monsieur, the poor do not need a great deal to live on ? they ask only the crumbs of bread which fall from the rich man's table ? but if they are refused these crumbs ? they die of hunger ? No more do I need a great deal of affection from those I love ? I would not know what to do with a whole and complete friendship ? I am not accustomed to it ? but you showed a little interest in me in days gone by when I was your pupil in Brussels ? and I cling to the preservation of this little interest ? I cling to it as I would cling on to life."

"I don't want to reread this letter ? I am sending it as I have written it ? Nevertheless I am as it were dimly aware that there are some cold and rational people who would say on reading it ? "she is raving" ? My sole revenge is to wish these people ? a single day of the torments that I have suffered for eight months ? then we should see whether they wouldn't be raving too.One suffers in silence so long as one has the strength and when that strength fails one speaks without measuring one's words much."

"Perhaps you will say to me ? "I no longer take the slightest interest in you Miss Charlotte ? you no longer belong to my household ? I have forgotten you." Well Monsieur tell me so candidly ? it will be a shock to me ? that doesn't matter ? it will still be less horrible than uncertainty."